The XIII?  World Forestry Congress, to be held as of next 18th to 23rd of October, in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, will be the first World Forestry Congress which shall achieve “Carbon Neutral” ranking.

With this initiative, and in addition to holding the “Forestry and Climate Change – To Copenhagen and Beyond” forum, the organization of the WFC 2009 hopes to reflect the importance which such problematic holds for the international forestry community.  
In order to achieve said goal, the WFC has entered an agreement with EcoSecurities, a leading company in the carbon market, by which the latter will render its vast experience in calculating the WFC Carbon footprints, and will exchange said footprints for carbon credits in compensation.
A carbon footprint is the level of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) caused by activities associated mainly to energy consumption (electricity consumption, heating, transportation, etc.) In the Congress’ case, carbon footprint calculation will be focused on indirect emissions, and amongst these, specifically trips by plane made by participants since this is the main source of emissions. However, it will likewise be important to consider direct emissions generated as a result of congress planning, such as staff trips and energy consumed in hotels and the congress grounds. Once emissions have been assessed, and with the objective of reaching carbon neutral ranking, EcoSecurities shall grant VERs (Verified Emmisions Reductions) to the WFC to compensate the emissions generated by the congress; the origin of said VERs is the Forestry-industrial Sector Biomass Energy Project (Nobrecel, Brazil).